View Full Version : We're back
OVERWATCH
12-25-2005, 04:51 AM
The database disappeared. Luckily we had yesterday's backup :]
-jewr friendly admin
OVERWATCH
12-25-2005, 04:58 AM
cewl.
Were we hacked?
Don't know. Maybe the server crapped out. :confused:
Ambrosio Spinola
12-25-2005, 05:16 AM
Seems like quite a coicidence that this would happen during Christmas. We do not know yet for sure but in any event our main weapon is still our regular back up set up.
Anyone would be good served if he/she would change passwords and run anti virus and adware software on their PCs.
Helios Panoptes
12-25-2005, 06:30 AM
back-up? what's a back-up? :p
Cheers! :)
Atlas
12-25-2005, 07:22 AM
Most important is that we're still around, just a few post less ain't really important.
Ambrosio Spinola
12-25-2005, 07:26 AM
IIRC we got hacked about the same time last year in Christmas..or was it January 1st? Anyhow...I fully expect us to become to holiday break hacker amusement. Its all about holding out.
Banat
12-25-2005, 12:54 PM
Seems like quite a coicidence that this would happen during Christmas.
Could it be a punishment from above, perhaps? Look how this decent man's only Christmas wish was constantly ignored:
http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/879/lennychristmas6zc.gif
Member 198
12-25-2005, 01:06 PM
Could it be a punishment from above, perhaps? Look how this decent man's only Christmas wish was constantly ignored:
*pic*
Good thinking Banat. It's good of you to let the mods know of the likelihood of Lenny being the one behind this recent hack, in spite of your friendship with him. :) I say we ban that evil Lenny of a man right now, just to be sure. :D
Jimbo Gomez
12-25-2005, 01:25 PM
Oh well, a minor setback. Our defenseless days are over folks.
Merry Christmas. :)
raven
12-25-2005, 01:42 PM
So it was just likely some technical problems and no hacking? The database went down but that was about it.
Jimbo Gomez
12-25-2005, 02:19 PM
99% sure it was a hack
zenero
12-25-2005, 02:25 PM
99% sure it was a hackDefinately. May i ask a personal question: Who do you think it is(the hacker/cracker)
a) The guy who hates John Dryden. b) Anti-Racists, cos this board is predominately full with political-incorrect people. c) Or again a inside-job.
Ambrosio Spinola
12-25-2005, 02:40 PM
Most likely 1 with a big dosis of lack of reality and old habits. C´mon..where is Fade? He is barely around...just leave us the fark alone, damnit.
raven
12-25-2005, 03:09 PM
Exactly. Fade isn't around much so if it is an enemy of Fade that is doing this it makes no sense. And if it's an ARA guy that's doing this I don't get it either to be honest. It's not like the Phora is popular like it used to be and it's not like PANF is popular. Diablo seems to think that PANF is more of a threat than SF and especially VNN because it is more inclusionary. No chance in hell no offense. Not to knock on his movement but PANF is not as big as VNN and especially not close to Stormfront.
PANF before some of the posts got deleted had about what? 40k posts at its peak. Stormfront has like 2.3m posts And VNN has over 280k. Even when you compare SF with VNN, VNN is seen as small-time. So this is why I am skeptical whether ARA freaks would try to hack Phora and PANF because well SF and VNN are bigger, more popular and you'd think you would have hackers going after them, not here or PANF. However I suppose that these hackers don't have the skill to penetrate Don Black's server (he obviously puts in a lot more money into SF. There have been attempts but they failed.) I think VNN might have been hacked before? So I think it's likely that a past enemy of Fade's/Phora's was responsible for this hack and that an enemy of Diablo from VNN/SF was responsible for PANF's hack.
Otherwise if it were anti-racists then these dudes would be clowns. Why would they waste their time when if they really wanted to show their 1337 h4x0r skillz they would go after VNN at least. Hacking forums makes no sense to me unless you had a grudge against the people on the forum or if you wanted to earn "h4x0r prestige."
infoterror
12-25-2005, 03:27 PM
It's ARA and script kiddies seeing what they can knock down, hence going through a list and implementing known exploits - badly. My guess is a poorly formatted overflow attack, hence it actually got written into the DB instead of executed.
Useful linki:
http://www.google.com/search?q=vBulletin+exploit
tricknologist
12-25-2005, 03:33 PM
I'm glad to see that you made a back up. Having the data base wiped out every few weeks was getting frustrating. Hopefully any further hacking attempts will just be a minor inconvienence rather than the total disaster they've been in the past.
tricknologist
12-25-2005, 03:37 PM
Any chance of getting the data base back up that Loki was supposed to have made put back up ? I heard talk of this before the Phora went down from the Scooby hacks.
Ace Rimmer
12-25-2005, 03:44 PM
Good work 88mmFlaK.
Jimbo Gomez
12-25-2005, 05:10 PM
Any chance of getting the data base back up that Loki was supposed to have made put back up ? I heard talk of this before the Phora went down from the Scooby hacks.
That database is gone forever.
Ixtab
12-25-2005, 08:10 PM
Most of my best posts have disappeared, since I made them recently.
Ambrosio Spinola
12-25-2005, 08:12 PM
The only stuff that could have disapeared was from yesterday. We do daily back ups but what happens in between..well...
Ixtab
12-25-2005, 08:15 PM
The only stuff that could have disapeared was from yesterday. We do daily back ups but what happens in between..well...It's strange, I always save my own posts as .txt documents before submitting them -- except for yesterday. I didn't think it would be necessary.
But at least we didn't lose much.
Fade the Butcher
12-25-2005, 09:44 PM
Didn't one of the hackers once claim that he would leave The Phora alone if someone else took over?
Jimbo Gomez
12-25-2005, 09:46 PM
They did yes. Doesn't matter, no respectable man negotiates with terrorists.
il ragno
12-25-2005, 10:40 PM
That database is gone forever.
And that is a goddamned tragedy.
I gotta be honest - I've been very scarce here of late for precisely that reason. The constant hacks and crashes, I mean....followed inevitably by the gone-forever archives. (And no, saving your own posts in MS Word ain't the answer, because it's the synergy of the give-and-take that makes a message board worthwhile in the first place.)
In a way, what this cocksucker Scooby (or whoever this malignant entity actually is) is accomplishing, by pushbutton and in microcosm, is what the forces of PC are doing to society in slow-motion.....making the past disappear, unhappen, wiped from memory. And you know what happens to people without a past, right?
Has anybody ever considered keeping everything exactly as is, and just changing the name of the board? Maybe if the Phora were a wee bit harder to locate, it would be harder to sabotage as well.
Sinclair
12-25-2005, 10:42 PM
It would be found, I bet. I mean, if we changed the name to Happy Happy Fun Land, it would still be "The Phora"...
But as long as offsite backups are kept, what damage can be done by script kiddies and the like?
The constant hacks and crashes, I mean....followed inevitably by the gone-forever archives.
Doesn't it give us a nice spiritual insight into the elusive and disappearing nature of all created things? Kinda like Buddhist monks slowly making their complicated sand mandalas which they then destroy with one stroke... :rolleyes:
Martin Luther said: "Even if I knew certainly the world would end tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today."
Petr
Fade the Butcher
12-25-2005, 10:46 PM
But as long as offsite backups are kept, what damage can be done by script kiddies and the like?Loki had the backup, but his old computer tore up.
il ragno
12-25-2005, 10:48 PM
Doesn't it give us a nice spiritual insight into the elusive and disappearing nature of all created things? Kinda like Buddhist monks slowsly making their complicated sand mandalas which they then destroy with one stroke...
You mean the Almighty is really a Jewish cop called "Scooby"? But that would mean Heaven is in Brighton Beach!
Agnosticism's looking better and better.
Sinclair
12-25-2005, 10:49 PM
Loki had the backup, but his old computer tore up.
Hm. What's the size of a backup? An external hard drive might be a good investment in that case. Copy the backup to a USB/FireWire HDD, then stash it somewhere.
Hm. I was gonna get one anyway.
You mean the Almighty is really a Jewish cop called "Scooby"?
I was being only half-serious. This is Finnish gallows humor, ho-ho.
Petr
Fade the Butcher
12-25-2005, 10:56 PM
Hm. What's the size of a backup? An external hard drive might be a good investment in that case. Copy the backup to a USB/FireWire HDD, then stash it somewhere.I don't remember. It was the biggest one we ever made, though.
il ragno
12-25-2005, 10:56 PM
I was being only half-serious. This is Finnish gallows humor, ho-ho.
Petr
I'm hip. Now have a nice piece of salmiakki on me.
And Merry Christmas, Petr.
Starr
12-25-2005, 11:07 PM
It's not like the Phora is popular like it used to be
Yeah, mostly because of all the hacks. Well, at least this time we just lost a few posts from a 24 hour period and we are still here.
So if it was a hack, they really accomplished nothing. Isn't that just so sad?:( :222:
Ambrosio Spinola
12-26-2005, 05:13 AM
I do not like all those "like it used to be". What is that? We are averaging about three pages a day (if not more) of new posts and threads. Thats about the same amount we had in our hedays. I´m a romanticist myself and also like to upheld the "good ol´times" but its just not true. If you are speaking about the good old debates then I might humor you..but then it was also mainly because we were all very fresh in that department. Nowadays I could not be bothered to debate the reality of sicle cell anemia or the % of Moor blood in Sicilians..been there, done that.
Other than this..I´m sure that as we stay up against the hacker, better and longer research papers wil,begin to show up. I can not stress enough the dispair I have felt in the last years due to amount of well written, well debated and well formulated threads we have lost. Hell..I recall translating entire texts in order to place them here. Like me many others...all this tends to vanish when you know it wont last more than two months.
Back ups are now in place and that is the best weapon for our long term survival and the mental peace of our membership.
It's strange, I always save my own posts as .txt documents before submitting them -- except for yesterday. I didn't think it would be necessary.
But at least we didn't lose much.
It's not strange at all, with the constant threat of losing posts that take over an hour to write, I save everything in documents.
Lenny
12-27-2005, 02:49 AM
More than one person should keep back-ups, so that if/when a back-up is needed, all does not depend on one person. If there is some problem with the back-up that Admin A has, then Admin B should be able to come to the rescue and say "no problem, I have a back-up here to use", and even if Admin B's back-up fails, then Admin C can simply provide the back-up he has, etc.
This seems like common sense to me, especially for a forum repeatedly subject to hacks and the elimination of it's archives.
More than one person should keep back-ups, so that if/when a back-up is needed, all does not depend on one person. If there is some problem with the back-up that Admin A has, then Admin B should be able to come to the rescue and say "no problem, I have a back-up here to use", and even if Admin B's back-up fails, then Admin C can simply provide the back-up he has, etc.
This seems like common sense to me, especially for a forum repeatedly subject to hacks and the elimination of it's archives.
Furthermore, backups should be taken at different times by different admins. Admin A backs his thang up on Mondays, Admin B on Thursdays, and Admin C on Saturdays. Or whatever. That way, we won't lose much when restoring back-ups.
That we were 'spared' this time is great, but don't wait until we're hacked the day before a back-up to learn our lesson.
Hakluyt
12-27-2005, 03:04 AM
I believe a rotating schedule is already in place amongst 3 or 4 of the admins.
I believe a rotating schedule is already in place amongst 3 or 4 of the admins.
But only because I suggested it. They simply saw the future. My suggestion contributed to forum security.
:p
Lenny
12-27-2005, 09:12 AM
I believe a rotating schedule is already in place amongst 3 or 4 of the admins.Why wasn't this ever done before I wonder, having more than one or two people in possession of a back-up
If four different people are taking regular back-ups now, then the board is invulnerable to obliteration http://www.thephora.net/forum/images/icons/icon14.gif
Ambrosio Spinola
12-27-2005, 10:14 AM
Well Lenny, I can not change the past as much as I would love to but it is true that backups are getting rotated amongst the Admin staff so that every day we have a new back up taken. I hear alos news on the posibility of automating the process so that back ups could be taken even every hour or so. Yes...we might get hacked again..actually..i fully expect this to get much worse before it gets any better. We are someone´s hobbie and such long relationships are hard to break or we would have not gotten hacked a couple days ago. The Hacker always claimed against all our clamoring about "free speech" and "free opposing views" that the problem was not the forum itself but Fade. Ok...Fade is still here but he has turned over the reigns and as far as I know the current team has no qualms with that hacker. Yet we still get attacked..thus, we are someone´s hobbie IMHO.
He will get bored hacking us before we get bored taking back ups and restoring the forum minutes after it went down. Furthermore, each hack makes us wiser and closes doors for him to exploit. If Stormfront can survive terrorist attacks so should we.
Jimbo Gomez
12-27-2005, 10:30 AM
Furthermore, backups should be taken at different times by different admins. Admin A backs his thang up on Mondays, Admin B on Thursdays, and Admin C on Saturdays. Or whatever. That way, we won't lose much when restoring back-ups.
That we were 'spared' this time is great, but don't wait until we're hacked the day before a back-up to learn our lesson.
That already happens. We have a schedule. Fear not my young friend. ;)
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